I like pickled eggs (boiled and peeled eggs soaked in brine), so I thought this might be an interesting way to make them. I also figured it would be easier to peel them if the shell was just a thin soft film… so we gave it a shot!

1. Egg in Cup of Vinegar

2. Post-Vinegar Egg

3. Egg in Pot

4. Boiling Egg

5. Boiled Egg

6. Post-Vinegar Boiled Peeled Half-Eaten Egg

The results…

It was indeed easier to peel. Once I broke the membrane, the egg just squeezed out.

The vinegar that soaked into the egg prevented it from solidifying as much as a normal boiled egg, leaving it goopy on the outside.

It tasted EXTREMELY bitter. Far more than just the sourness you would get from vinegar. The shell must have dissolved into the egg. I found the flavor of the white part unpleasant, even with salt–and I tend to like strong flavors. The texture wasn’t very appealing either. The yolk didn’t taste quite as bitter as the white, but it was fairly nasty, and not something I am likely to eat a second time on purpose.

I have a friend who uses the nickname “howdy” so I try to take a picture any time I see “howdy” on something.

Thom went to a game store and bought a pound of dice (I had no idea they sold them by the pound). He brought them to lunch and shared. I found many dice I really liked. There were only enough for one complete set of platonic solids for each of us, though. This is the set I chose:

I find it interesting that with the pieces in ascending order (by number of adjacent faces) with ascending numbers on top oriented so they can be read right-side-up from the front, the numbers in front are in descending order, ending on the right with a vertex representing zero. I suspect that’s more than coincidence.

… interesting choice of font.

This is my son’s Halloween costume this year.

A red leaf from the tree in our front yard.

This grasshopper is missing a leg.

This picture was taken while waiting in an emergency room a couple years ago. My son had accidentally stabbed a shard of broken glass into his leg, and was waiting to get stitches. He still has a big scar. Counting the lines on the scar, it looks like he got six stitches.

I don’t normally carry pictures of my kids with me. I had my pocket camera with me in Norway, so when people would ask me about my kids, I only had the pictures on the camera to show them. Here’s the picture I showed them of my youngest:

Here’s the picture of my son that showed:

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any pictures of my fourteen year old with me.

I also had this picture on my camera, which amused a few people:

On the street where I encountered the prostitutes, there was a McDonald’s with silver arches:

At work, there was a bathroom/watercloset door with this on it:

It’s a good example of how easy it can be to figure out the basic meaning of Norwegian phrases.

When I saw this pipe, I immediately knew I had to take this picture:

Maybe I’m a pervert, but to me it looks like this troll is about to flash us:

Here’s a tiny car. They weren’t very common in Norway, but certainly more common than in the United States.

Here’s her picture:

Here’s a picture of my sister:

Those pictures don’t really show the likeness very well, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.

The bartender (like my sister) didn’t like having her picture taken. She made me delete a couple that didn’t turn out. I was accommodating, even though I usually don’t delete photos, as a rule. I mentioned to her that I used to hate having my picture taken until I realized that I keep getting uglier as I get older, and that all my old pictures look great to me. She said she thought that was a pretty good way to look at it.

Some Norwegian words and phrases she taught me:

• SkÃ¥l (Cheers!)
• BÃ¥nnsky (Bottoms up!)
• HallÃ¥ pÃ¥san! (Hello, countryman/old friend!)

She explained that it was very witty to say “hallÃ¥ pÃ¥san”… I got a few laughs with it. I failed to get anyone to finish off a drink with “bÃ¥nnsky” unfortunately.

I don’t remember her name, sadly… but I really enjoyed talking with her.

I thought Utah had strict liquor laws… but apparently Norway (or at least Oslo) has even stricter laws. They were only allowed to serve 21% vodka. I tasted a small amount of the vodka straight, and it was… kinda cute.

I also saw a guy denied alcohol because his ID photo was unclear. Poor guy.

Fortunately, they also had a local beer called Borg that was okay!

We are Borg. You will be slightly inebriated. Resistance is… easy.

While I was at the karaoke bar, I sang four songs… two Doors songs, a Pink Floyd song, and an INXS song. There was a small group of young people who seemed to really like my choice of music. They would get up in front of the stage and dance whenever I sang. That was pretty cool.

I also spent some time talking to a cool guy there who strongly encouraged me to get a Skype account so we could talk. While that sounds fun, I don’t really find myself in a quiet environment very often. I hardly even talk on the phone… so for the time being, I think I’ll remain Skypeless. I’ve kept his contact information though.

That more or less covers the karaoke bar.

Day 5 in Norway was my last full day. I was there with a co-worker (who I’ll refer to as Rick, because that’s his name). Rick suggested that since the weather was great, we might want to leave work while there was still plenty of daylight left and see a bit of Oslo… so we did. He’d been there before, so he was my tour guide.

First we went to Vigeland Sculpture Park, which was pretty impressive, but before we’d seen the whole thing I developed a sudden urgent need to visit a watercloset. Rick suspected the cause was the enormous Coca-Cola Light I had on the way, but it wasn’t that sort of need. I’d apparently eaten something that was in a big hurry to get somewhere. Even though the stay at the park was cut short, I managed to get quite a few pictures.

Rick has six young kids spaced very close together. The youngest are twins. He said “see if you can find the sculpture of me.” I identified it without trouble.

There’s also an uncensored photo of the sculpture.

This one made me think of my son. This whole park has a family theme, actually.

Those sculptures lined the walkway. Here’s a snapshot showing how it looks (including the back of Rick’s head).

In the full-resolution version, you can see some detail in the sculptures.

After I took care of my business, we left the park and caught a train to a little ski resort area. As the train slowed at one of the train stops along the way, we noticed a man being given CPR just outside our window. Rick had a view of the man’s face from where he was sitting, and said it didn’t look good. When the train pulled away, they were still trying to revive him.

We accidentally got off the train one stop early and decided to walk to the next stop rather than waiting for the train. That decision worked out very well. I got some good pictures along the way.

This picture of moss could stand to be lightened, but for some reason I included it in the group of photos I uploaded for this post.

These flowers were growing on the side of the road. They’re white with yellow centers. The picture didn’t look very good in color, but I like the black-and-white.

Here’s the road we walked along. If you look off in the distance, you can see a “NO BLUE!” sign. Norwegian’s apparently HATE blue. These signs were scattered all over.

When we reached our destination, we could see some fjords, but it wasn’t clear enough that I felt like taking pictures of them. Instead, we had some soup and apple cake. It was yummy, and apparently the apple cake is famous. That evening someone asked me where I’d gone, and didn’t seem sure what I was talking about until I mentioned the apple cake.

We sat up at the top of the mountain looking down at fjords, talking, and enjoying the clean air for a while (it had rained recently, but it was a relatively clear day), then caught the train and went to a pier where I took more pictures. I’m only including a picture of a sculpture we saw there. If you’re interested in more pictures from the pier, there’s a link to all my Norway photos at the end of this post.

It’s a melon. In Norwegian it’s called a “melon.” Those wacky Norwegians.

After wandering around the pier, we headed back to the city. For some reason we stopped at a 7-11 (Rick needed something), and I noticed that they have a better selection of prepared food there than the 7-11s I’m familiar with (basically hot dogs and nachos, if you consider the warming of nacho cheese to be “preparation”).

While we were there, someone bought the sushi in the top right corner. I think there’s an Indian dish on the bottom. Everything looked pretty edible.

For dinner, we went to some sort of fancy schmancy restaurant where we paid about $100 per person. Rick wanted to have “the big fish” (apparently it’s huge) but they had a guest chef from Belgium and the waiter was very insistent that we order the Belgian food. The food was okay, but I think I missed the point or something. I wouldn’t deliberately order it again, even if it cost significantly less. Still, it was interesting. The waiter was snobby and French, so we could tell the restaurant was fancy even if we couldn’t understand him when he told us what we were eating. “He didn’t ACTUALLY say the scallops were served in battery acid, did he?” “Nah, I think it was his accent, but I’m not sure what he said.”

After dinner, Rick had to go to sleep, because he had an early (7:00 AM) flight out. I, on the other hand, had a late (12:30 PM) flight… so I went back to my hotel room for a little while, then walked to the karaoke bar I’d visited on the night when I learned how to ditch pushy prostitutes. I’ll cover the karaoke bar later.

Oh… and I saw this sign everywhere:

If you’re interested, you can check out all the photos from the trip on Flickr. There’s an excessive quantity of candle photos. That’s because they take their time serving dinner in Norway, and they often have candles on the table.

I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t so good that I would go out of my way for it a second time. Please do not tell my three year old daughter that I ate reindeer… thanks.

Unfortunately, it was another bad photo today. I’m pretty rusty with my big camera (which is sad, because it’s much more capable), and I have no way of getting photos from my small camera to the computer until I get home (I forgot a necessary adapter).

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Here’s a photo I took yesterday of Oslo Central Station. It’s right across from my hotel. I rode the train from the airport to the hotel. It was very convenient.

It’s about 11:30 PM in Norway and I’m falling asleep, so this is all I’m posting for day 2.

So far all my photos are crap. I blame sleep deprivation. I think the camera was in macro mode when I took the picture of the bed. It’s not actually small enough to justify that. In fact, it’s a pretty normal sized bed.

This is where I slept last night. It’s a bed. It’s in Norway. It’s a Norwegian bed.

This is also where I slept last night. It’s a hotel. It’s also in Norway. It’s a Norwegian hotel.

That’s all for now.

On an unrelated note, I’m posting this with Windows Live Writer Beta, which has a beautifully minimal user interface and functional user interface. Good job, Windows Live Writer team!

She was asking me to do something, and demonstrating. I don’t remember now what she wanted me to do, but I’m pretty sure it was something simple like “make a funny face.”

Sure enough…

It seems to be fully functional:

A few minutes later she made me a baba cake.

Unrelated, here are a couple pictures of a badly parked car outside the office where I work:

Is it possible that they didn’t notice one their tire was perched on the edge of the curb?

Like some insects and arachnids I’ve worked with, Matt was a very cooperative model. Unlike an insect, he takes requests for poses. (Matt is unlike an insect in several other ways, too.)

Here are another couple pictures of Matt from above.

This is the area where the next few photos were taken:

Some closer photos of the falling water:

Matt found a piece of fabric that someone had apparently left behind. It smelled like suntan lotion, and made a fabulous cape… so naturally he played superhero.

Somehow a couple ants got on the hat Matt was borrowing from my wife. I think they wanted their pictures taken. I only rewarded one of them.

Here’s Matt walking away from me:

We visited a pond with an incredible amount of life in it. I sat in one corner and took pictures of various little critters that showed up while Matt explored the area. Eventually he came back and directed the critters to help me get better photos.

This bug swims upside down under the water. Maybe it thinks the air is the ground, and the water is the atmosphere. I have decided to refer to this confused insect as “6nq umop apisdn”.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these squiddy looking bug critters before. I haven’t tried yet to look it up.

This spider was swimming on top of the water. I took some video of that, but I haven’t watched it yet.

There were a few of these little guys moving around.

Here’s the same guy after crawling out of the water and onto the concrete.

Again, the same guy on the concrete. About the time I took the picture below, Matt made a comment about this being pretty much the way life evolved.

In this picture you can also see some odd little greenish blobbies. Those things were everywhere; floating on top of the water, sitting on the bottom, etc. You can see them in a couple other pictures too. I’m not sure what they are, but I suspect they’re eggs.

We also found a wasp nest. I suspect it had been poisoned and knocked down. After I took this picture, Matt turned over the nest with his foot (I stood a safe distance away) and a couple live wasps came out.

When the wasps came out of the nest, one flew away, and one writhed around in the grass. The writhing wasp is the reason for me thinking they may have been poisoned. Matt suggested that maybe it was a baby and its wings weren’t developed enough for it to fly yet. Here’s a picture of the writhing wasp.

A lock.

Here’s Matt wearing his cape on his head on the walk home.

There are many other pictures from that walk, but this is plenty for now. At the end of the walk, my wife and youngest child came to meet us, then we all went out to eat.